Waymo's announcement on Tuesday of its status and plans in
San Francisco, a small peninsula of hills, trolleys, bicycles, and narrow
streets, shows the length that remains before driverless transport becomes
commonplace.
The company's all-electric Jaguar I-PACE SUVs initially are
serving the more residential western and southern portions of the city,
including Richmond and Bernal Heights. Operators are in driver's seats with
hands on their knees - but prepared to steer in an emergency.
Anybody can sign up for Waymo's ride-hailing app, though the
company is hand-selecting who it picks up with the list expected to grow
gradually to hundreds of people. Waymo bars them from publicly discussing
rides.
Sam Kansara, senior product manager at Waymo, acknowledged
that autonomous vehicles are rolling out slower than Waymo and its many rivals
had originally envisioned.
"There's a lot that remains to be done," Kansara
said. "This is a step about starting to now get more information so that
we can inform our roadmap."
The company wants feedback from people with differing
backgrounds and commuting needs. It expects many riders to weigh in on
challenges with hopping on and off because of San Francisco's limited curb
space and rampant double parking.
Employees riding in the city since February gave the company
confidence to expand to the public, Kansara said.
Waymo last October in a first-of-its-kind deployment in the
United States for the industry started allowing anyone to buy rides in its
fully driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans in some Phoenix, Arizona, suburbs.
The launch followed three years of testing, but Kansara said he hopes lessons learned from that experience will bring about swifter progress in San Francisco. © Reuters
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